LOS ANGELES — Donald Sterling and the woman in a taped conversation that caught the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers making racist comments attended the same high school in East Los Angeles' Boyle Heights.

Forty-eight years apart.

Sterling, 80, the disgraced owner banned for life from the NBA, graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1952 under his given name Don Tokowitz, and the woman known as V. Stiviano, then Vanessa Perez, now 31, graduated from the school in 2000.

Donald Sterling's high school yearbook portrait.(Photo: Roosevelt High School Yearbook)

Sterling's wife Rochelle, then Rochelle Stein, also graduated from the high school in 1952.

"We're a little shocked and saddened by his comments," said Bivins, who is in his first year at the school.

Bivins said he has had no contact with Sterling but that for the past five years Sterling has donated $5,000 annually to a local scholarship fund that distributes about $100,000 to Roosevelt graduates going to college.

Sterling, owner of the Clippers, has been invited to the annual senior awards night, but neither he nor any of his representatives have attended, Bivins said.

The Sterling scandal has been a topic of conversation among some students. Seniors Kimberly Cortez and Ray Lopez said it came up during their morning English class when they were discussing communication between men and women and generational racism. Both said they were surprised to learn that Sterling was a graduate of their high school.

"What a shame for Roosevelt," Cortez said.

Calvin Long, the English teacher, said, "We talked about the racism of one or two generations ago and how his thinking was representative of the time of his growing up."